vim tips and tricks

spelling

This is a good place to learn about plugins. Go to
www.vim.org, click on the
Search link,
search the scripts for spelling, and then download the vimspell.vim
plugin. To install it, put it in your ~/.vim/plugin directory.
Then vim a file and type :help vimspell.

The page on word completion also shows how to load a dictionary.
You probably want to put the :set dictionary=/usr/share/dict/words
in your .vimrc file.